Michael I Komnenos Doukas

Michael I Komnenos Doukas (1170-1215) was the Despot of Epirus from 1205 to 1215, preceding Theodore Komnenos Doukas.

Biography
Michael Komnenos Doukas was born in 1170, an illegitimate member of the Doukas family; he was a cousin of Emperors Isaac II and Alexius III. He served as Governor of Mylasa and Melanoudion during the 1190s and 1200s, and, in 1200, he launched a failed rebellion against Alexius and was forced to flee to the Seljuk Turks. Following the Fourth Crusade's Sack of Constantinople in 1204, Michael attached himself to Boniface of Montferrat, only to betray the crusader leader and establish the Despotate of Epirus on the Adriatic Sea coast of Greece and Albania. He led the abortive resistance to the crusaders in the Peloponnese before campaigning there from 1207 to 1209, and he attacked the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica in conjunction with the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1210. He was repelled when the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders intervened, and, in 1212, he conquered most of Thessaly from the Lombard regents of Thessalonica. From 1213 to 1214, he reconquered Dyrrhachium and Corfu from the Republic of Venice, but he was assassinated in his sleep in 1215.